Indexing – Category Products Indexing Guide

indexing

If I re-index catalog_category_product, shouldn't the tables catalog_category_product and catalog_category_product_index have the same amount of entries afterwards?

If not, what is the difference or what explains it?

If yes, how come they are still different?

Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

They shouldn't have the same number of records.
The table catalog_category_product contains the links you create in the backend. Here is an example. Let's say you have the following category structure. Using category ids:

2
|-4
|-5
  |-6

And in the backed you associate the product with id 99 to the category with id 6.
Then in catalog_category_product you will have:

category_id = 6
product_id = 99
position = 0 (or whatever)

Let's say category 5 is anchor and category 2 is root. After reindexing you will see in catalog_category_product_index you will have 3 records for each store view where the product is available:

category_id|product_id|position|is_parent|store_id|visibility  
2          |99        |P1      |1        |1       |4  
5          |99        |P2      |1        |1       |4   
6          |99        |P3      |0        |1       |4

P1, P2, P3 are the product positions.See how they are calculated in here.
is_parent is 0 if the product is directly related to the category and 1 if it's related to a child category (I'm not 100% sure about this).

Also, from the _index table only enabled products appear.

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